Chewing Gum and Rubber Bands No More

There is an old saying about something held together with chewing gum and rubber bands, and I’ve owned cars that were held together by filler and thick paint! But what still surprises me is looking at the corporate world and seeing the number of important functions running via a spreadsheet or some other personal productivity tool. You see this all the time in IT departments. Tracking lists for incidents, IT assets, access privileges, network nodes, IT resources and work assignments – all tracked in some random tool that gets emailed around the company!

Once the IT group is larger than a few people, using these personal productivity tools to run corporate functions just does not scale. They quickly change from being productivity enhancers to productivity inhibitors. When I hear about IT groups that are drowning in just having to maintain business as usual, I usually see an assortment of these manual processes that require a Herculean effort to maintain.

There has got to be a better way. One of the most significant improvements IT can make is to jettison all the various, disconnected IT tools various team members use and abandon personal productivity software for departmental functions in favor of a single system of record for the work of IT. Once IT modernizes through consolidation, it can move on to automate key processes. The result is transformational.

ServiceNow has enabled large enterprises and organizations to establish a single system of record and utilize a platform for automating workflow for a decade. Now I see more and more people who need to corral their IT processes. There are many companies that need a rapid deployment service management solution, with out of the box IT process templates and definitions, but that also have a desire to keep configuration and customization to a minimum. It is for these types of customers we have created the new ServiceNow Express solution.

It is easy-to-use and implement. Companies can automate ticketing and get away from email. They can resolve IT matters quickly and have greater visibility into workload and the nature of issues. IT asset tracking can move from spreadsheet to a centralized, automated system. IT leaders can show the value of IT and performance with reporting and dashboards. IT work can be reviewed and prioritized using Visual Task Boards. These boards organize services and other tasks using a Kanban-inspired layout that fosters collaboration and increases productivity. And the best part is that all of this comes from the same system of record with the same, shared data. With all that, it will be time to get rid of rubber bands and chewing gum for good.